"Hate Speech" Points to Heaven

A couple of years ago I wrote about the time my husband and I were driving through Asheville, North Carolina on the way home from a swim meet. I was driving while he watched English Premier League soccer on his phone. I approached a car that looked like it might be an unmarked police car. I asked Will if it was. He looked up and confirmed that no, it was not a police officer. This quickly proved to be costly misinformation. The friendly cop was quite amused that my passenger stared him down in his brimmed trooper hat, but this did not result in grace. I still got a ticket.

When the smartest, most loving people you know can lead you astray, unwittingly of course, this just proves that perfect information is unattainable. Misinformation, like most problems in this world, is not solvable. There aren’t any truly reliable sources. This simple fact — like so many readily accessible observations — is wholly ignored by society. The outcry against misinformation only evidences the pitifully shallow thought processes of those who protest.

Similarly, “hate speech” points to a standard that is unattainable in this life. I don’t know who first said it, but “haters gonna hate.” We live in a fallen world and we are going to encounter terribly wounded people who spew hate.

But I was driving today thinking about how even with speech and information issues there are only trade-offs, not solutions, and it occurred to me that C.S. Lewis’s quote from Mere Christianity applies.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

In short, if we can imagine a place with perfect information and an environment free of hate speech, perhaps there is such a place, a place called heaven where the brokenness of this world is undone by the sacrifice of Jesus, the perfect Lamb.

Ecclesiastes says that God wrote eternity on our hearts (3:11). Deep down we know there is a place where our longings are fulfilled, and yet we still get tripped up trying to create heaven on earth despite stark and continuous failures.

Digging Deeper:

1. Lewis wrote that “A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.” Can you think of another example of how our desires point to existence?

2. How specifically could you describe to an unbeliever a couple of ways that eternity is written on your heart?

3. How do you hold in tension your role to help make this world as loving as possible with the reality that only God can fully redeem it? How are you doing loving your little circle of influence?